14 DAY TRIAL // UPDATE: Huawei has removed the ads, but claims it's not the one to blame for this incident. Original story below.
A few new Huawei smartphone models have started showing Booking.com ads directly on the lock screen, and it’s easy to see why the owners are none too happy about it.
When you spend a lot of money of a premium smartphone, you don’t expect to get ads on the lock screen or in any other part of the device. There are a few companies out there, like Alcatel for example, that shows ads directly from system apps, but that only happens with low-end devices.
Not to mention the fact that Huawei is now in the middle of a much bigger problem that’s likely to complexly sink the company altogether, at least on the international stage. Following the inclusion of Huawei on a blacklist in The United States, the company can’t do business with American firms, which is really, really bad.
Is this a money grab? Not likely
Quite a few users have reported that their phones have started showing ads on the lock screen, and, according to XDA, those devices include the likes of Huawei P30 Pro, Huawei P20 Pro, P20, P20 Lite, and P10 Lite, not to mention the Honor 10.
Some might think that the official Booking app somehow provides the ads, but most users who are reporting this issue don’t even have that installed. The problem rests with Magazine Unlock. In theory, people get some nice wallpapers on their unlock screen.
Unfortunately for Huawei users, it looks like Magazine Unlock is now using Booking.com as the source. It doesn’t really matter where your form, this problem happens no matter the nationality, as seen in this Reddit thread. It’s easily fixable if you can call this a fix, by disabling the auto-update for this feature.
It’s unclear if this is a mistake on Huawei’s part, albeit unlikely, or it’s some deal they have with Booking.com, which in turn generates even bigger PR problems for a company that’s already in deep doo-doo. Users were definitely not asked if they consent to ads on their phones.
The most likely explanation is that the Magazine Unlock feature draw pictures from a source that also indexes images that are licensed by Booking.com, hence the watermark. It doesn’t make it better.
